A Ghost in the Moonlight
by navigatorsghost
Summary: Ghost Rider fic. Just a road story, of what one man saw one night in the moonlight.


Summary: Just another road story.  
Disclaimer: The Ghost Rider is not mine, even though the archetype feels like it ought to be public domain. Tex, Pinto, Cap and their companions, however, are.

Author's Note: This is of course Marvel's Ghost Rider, the John Blaze version, but I don't think you'll lose much even if you're not familiar with the canon. Constructive feedback very much invited - this is a classic storytelling form, and I want to know if I did it justice.

_A Ghost in the Moonlight_

"Hey, Tex?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Do you believe in the Ghost Rider, man?"  
  
It was after midnight. The fire was dying, and its last light threw dancing devil shadows across the faces of the men who sat or slouched around it. The sky above was a wasteland of stars, pale as scattered dust. On the horizon hung a fat silver dollar of a moon, and its light gleamed quietly off the chrome of the big bikes that sat back in the shadows behind their owners. In the vast silence of the desert night, every word felt like an act of daring. Nobody said anything that wasn't important.  
  
Tex - broad-shouldered, black-leathered, gray-haired - took a long, thoughtful pull on his beer. His companions sat out the silence, watching his face intently. Nobody pushed for an answer to a question like that.  
  
"I reckon," he said gruffly at last, "I do."  
  
Five bearded heads nodded in agreement. No one interrupted.  
  
"I never seen him, mind," Tex went on pensively. The man to his right passed him the glowing, shrunken remains of their latest joint; Tex took it and dragged on it with absent expertise. Ash dropped barely a quarter inch from his fingers, but he handed it on without taking a burn. "But I believe in him. A dead man riding? When you think of all the good men that die on these highways, who done nothing but ride all their lives - I say, it don't seem so strange to me."  
  
A tall, gaunt-faced man across the circle from Tex nodded sharply and grunted. "They say he rides the biggest bike you'll ever see, all blazing," he said darkly. "Wheels of fire that leave burning lines in the asphalt. They say he's got no face, just a skull's grin all covered in flame. You believe that?"  
  
Tex shook his head. "Can't tell you," he said. "That's what they say. Like I told you, I never saw him."  
  
"That's not what I heard," chimed in someone else. "The way I was told it up in Montana, they say he wears all white and a mask, and he shines in the dark. Didn't say nothing about no skeletons."  
  
"That's bullshit," a fourth speaker said dismissively. "That's some other fucking ghost story. Some phantom cowboy or some shit like that."  
  
"Not what I heard," someone interrupted. "I heard he's a great black devil man with a black bike and burning red eyes that see right through you. He's not a ghost. He's from hell."  
  
"Bull shit!"  
  
Silence, spreading out like a shadow unfolding its wings. Everyone looked at the man who had spoken.  
  
"Well, Cap," Tex said softly, almost deferentially. "What you got to say about the Ghost Rider?"  
  
The man addressed as Cap sat forward, moving from his place on the edge of the circle until the firelight fell upon his face. His eyes were set skull-deep under great bristling brows, and his hair was so white that the light turned it red. His face might have been handsome, half a century ago, but the whole of the left side was twisted by a mass of scars. His leathers were worn to a second skin; the ring in his ear held a human fingerbone dangling among his tangled hair. He sucked in a breath, his maimed mouth curling open to show yellowed, crooked teeth. Nobody moved.  
  
"_I'll_ tell you," he said, in a voice like gravel crunching under iron wheels, "about the Ghost Rider." He looked from one man to another as though daring them to challenge him. "The Ghost Rider ain't no fag cowboy in a sheet. He ain't no devil nigger. Those stories, they go around, but they ain't nothing.  
  
"No. The Ghost Rider's a demon made of bones all wreathed in fire, and he rides a bike made out of nothing but smoke and flame. He rides the highways at night, seeking out the guilty and the wicked, and burns them up with the touch of Hell's own fires." Cap stared into the flames, his voice quiet and far away; nobody spoke, or even breathed. "They say he was once a man, until he made a deal with the devil and got himself cursed to wear the face of a dead man and ride forever in search of salvation.  
  
"Some call him the Spirit of Vengeance."  
  
The fire flared and spat suddenly, showering sparks, and the men jumped and cursed, some of them even glancing over their shoulders. "The Spirit of Vengeance," one repeated softly, uneasily. He was a short man but broad, with a silver ring in his nose and a rearing horse tattooed on his forearm. He paused, shifting awkwardly, then in a sudden rush he burst out: "How do you _know_, Cap?"  
  
Cap tilted his head, his mouth crooking in a dark, lopsided smile. "Because, Pinto," he said, "I seen him."  
  
An audible rush of air ran around the circle, the mingled intake of five gasped breaths. Eyes widened, jaws fell slack. Cap gave a creaking bark of laughter. "Stop goggling, you dumbasses. I tell you I saw the Ghost Rider and lived to tell the tale.  
  
"It was twenty years ago now, maybe more. I was riding way out west, down through California, right in the middle of summer. You know how it is out there, with the road all slick with heat and the asphalt melting under your tires, and at night the palms wave in the moonlight and it's so hot you don't need a fire..." His hoarse voice was distant with recollection. "Anyway, one night I stopped at a bar called the White Lady.  
  
"The White Lady was a roadhouse, a truckers' and bikers' joint. Wasn't nobody in there who didn't drive a hog or a rig. The law never went in, nobody asked any questions." His listeners nodded. There were bars like that all across America, and these men all knew their value.  
  
"Anyway, the night I was in there, it was a full moon. The stars were all out, the wind was blowing, everything all black and silver. Like something from a dream. Still never saw another night like that, not before nor since.  
  
"I sat outside with a beer, shooting the breeze with a coupla long-distance guys from some two-bit haulage firm. It was deep night and dead quiet, the road had been empty for the last hour and a half. And then somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard a bike engine.  
  
"Only no engine ever sounded like that. Too deep, too throaty, too damn loud. Kinda like a Harley or something like one, only much bigger'n that and _darker_, if that makes any sense to ya. Me and the truckers, we looked at each other and we went, what the hell? And then I heard the laughter." Cap paused, shaking his grizzled head. "You know," he said sharply, "I can see you boys all thinking I'm crazy. But I tell you, that's what I heard. Most horrible noise I ever hear in my life. Nothing human ever laughed like that, it was more like some demon screaming for vengeance. And whatever it was it wasn't stopping to take a breath, either, and I reckon that was the worst thing about it.  
  
"My spine was all a-prickle and my blood was solid ice in my veins. I could hear whatever it was coming closer, but may God help me if I could have moved from where I sat. My eyes were glued to that empty stretch of road in the moonlight, and I didn't want to know what was going to come down it but not for a lifetime of free gasoline could I have looked away."  
  
He stopped and looked around the circle. His listeners leaned in, barely breathing. Five pairs of wide eyes gleamed in the firelight. The silence pressed in, thick as the shadows.  
  
Cap took a deep breath. "And then," he said, his voice hushed, "I saw a light to the south, coming up the road. Not headlights. A sick yellow kind of light it was, like swamp fire or the glow above a hanged man's grave. Nothing good or clean or holy about it. I'd have been praying for my soul, if I could've moved my lips to speak.  
  
"Then around the bend come a great black car, some Ford or something with its engine screaming like a banshee. It skidded bad on the curve, but the driver got it back and put his foot down and away that thing went like a bat out of hell. And then that blaze of yellow light brightened til the whole night was burning and not fifty yards behind the Ford, around that bend come the Ghost Rider.  
  
"Believe me, you ain't never seen the like of it. A thing with the shape of a man but with a great death's head streaming brimstone fire where its face should have been, sitting up in the saddle of a cruiser twice the size of any bike ever built. The forks were just about a mile long and all the chrome was molten red, and the wheels were white hot and streaming fire. And this - this _thing _was leaning over its handlebars like some stunt racer, and it opened up the throttle and whatever hell-powered engine was in there roared like the wrath of God. The bike took clear off the ground and shot through the air like it was aiming to jump the car, only then the Ghost Rider let go the bars and stood up. And he shot out his hand, and a bolt of flame went screaming from his fingertips and hit the Ford right in the hood.  
  
"The engine blew right away, of course, and the thing just flipped and spun sideways with fire pouring out of its guts. The Ghost Rider landed his bike and swung it round, and his jaws were wide open and he was screeching with laughter. Like blasting that car and burning the poor bastards inside alive was just the funniest thing on earth. I sat frozen like a fool and wished for my mother or Jesus or somebody to save me, cos I thought for sure he was coming for us next.  
  
"Only he didn't. I'm not sure he even saw we were there. He just looked at the car for a minute, and then the gas tank caught and the whole thing blew up. Smoke and fire went roaring across the road and washed over him, and somehow by God's mercy that broke whatever spell the Ghost Rider had on me. I threw myself down behind the wall with blazing twisted metal flying over my head and when I got up, he was gone. Not a trace left of him, bar a line of fire twisting into the distance down the freeway, and the shell of that Ford still burning out by the side of the road."  
  
Cap's voice trailed off into silence. His hearers let out breaths they had barely known they were holding, looking at each other with eyes wide. "Dear Lord," whispered one.  
  
"So," Cap said. "That's the story of how I saw the Ghost Rider. Next morning the law come and cleared up the mess, but nobody believed anyone who said what they'd seen. Me, I kept my mouth shut.  
  
"Thing was, the folks in that car? Turned out they was a bunch of armed robbers who'd busted one of their own out of the penitentiary that same night. Killed five lawmen and the two girls they'd stolen the car from. All four of them died in that blaze.  
  
"And every time I hear about the Ghost Rider, I keep hearing that same thing. Whoever he goes after, they always done something to damn themselves to hell, and he's there to make sure they get there. The Spirit of Vengeance. I reckon I believe that.

"And every night to this very night, I pray I never do nothing to make him come riding for me."  
  
The soft avowal fell into the shadows of the empty night, lost against the dying red light and swallowed in the bottomless sky. The bikers bowed their heads, wordless, a couple of them even crossing themselves. A crooked smile touched old Cap's scarred face. "Anyone here who don't believe in the Ghost Rider?"  
  
Silence answered him. "Good," he said. "And on that note, gentlemen, I guess I'll say goodnight." Nobody demurred, the men readily moving for their blankets. There were some stories that weren't meant to be followed.  
  
And if the sleep of six brave men of the road was disturbed that night by the distant roar of engines and the phantom echoes of hollow laughter, who should say that it was other than a restless dream that came to them on the wings of the desert wind?

_Fin_


End file.
